While in general I think that the new space policy is a vast improvement over the previous one, it is marred by the disdain that the administration displays toward the moon as a useful goal. Paul Spudis (who else) defends the moon against the foolish arguments opposed to it. There may be good reasons not to go back to the moon, but I haven’t heard any, and “we’ve been there” certainly isn’t one. I know for sure that that I haven’t been there.
Paul also asks, why wait for heavy lift?
This new document indicates that work will proceed on development of a heavy lift launch vehicle, with a decision on what vehicle to build coming in 2015 (note well: not building a vehicle, but making a decision on what vehicle to build). How will our decision on heavy lift be more informed in five years than it is now?
If there’s anyone who doesn’t speak for this administration, it’s me, but my answer is: if we start doing the necessary tech demos for autonomous docking/mating, propellant storage and transfer, we may be informed enough to finally convince everyone except the die-hard Apollo cargo cultists and giant penis enviasts that we don’t need a heavy lift vehicle, at least any larger than natural growth versions of what currently exists.
Martijn,
BTW folks forget that one of the many firsts the Shuttle program is able to claim was the demonstration that orbital refueling of satellites was possible. Its on page 19 of the press kit for STS-41_G below.
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/sts-41g/sts41g.pdf
Yes, there is so much the Shuttle has done to pioneer space…
Ed Minchau,
Yes, that is a good market, one that Orbital Recovery was looking to fill a few years ago.
Yes, and so did Orbital Express and then there’s the Russian system that has been operational since I was a little boy. All your hypothetical Lunar Development Corporation would have to do is to buy substantial amounts of propellant in orbit. You don’t need a separate organisation for that, NASA could easily do that. Whether they should be trusted with this is another matter. The sooner we do this, the sooner we open up space. We could do it existing technology, in which case all this could be operational within five years, including a spacecraft. We could also delay it for ten to fifteen years. In that case more of us will be dead and buried by the time RLVs become operational.
Martijn,
The problem with NASA buying it would be selling it again. As an agency they are not set up to do that effectively. Another reason to use a government corporation model.
There’s no need to sell it. In fact, that’s precisely something I wouldn’t want NASA to be involved with because as you say they are not set up to do this effectively. They would just have to buy it and then presumably use it, most likely for exploration, either manned or unmanned. This still requires government funding, but it minimises government interference in operations.
The use isn’t actually essential for reducing launch cost, but it is probably necessary to get this funded. It’s just a more easily funded variant of schemes such as those proposed by Pournelle (launching sand) or those that Rand tells us were the subject of watercooler discussions at Rockwell in the eighties (launching water). Assuming there is going to be exploration that is.
Depots selling propellant won’t be needed until we have high commercial traffic beyond LEO. Depots buying it (or just spacecraft capable of in-flight refueling doubling as makeshift depots) would be very useful straight away.
> Ed Minchau Says:
> April 20th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
> The ISS needs its orbit periodically reboosted. They have been
> using the shuttle to do that so far, but that’s obviously coming
> to an end soon. ==
??
ISS has and uses its noboard manuvering systems for reboost and manuvering away from collisions. Thats what the Russian Progress tanker/Frighter is refueling. Been doing it — well decades longer then theirs been a ISS.
Also a fuel depot couldn’t help the ISS since it can’t manuver to dock?
>== vehicle that refills at a depot and then reboosts various
> orbital assets makes a lot of sense. The technology to do
> this needs to be developed, but would make a big difference
> in the lifespan of expensive satellites.
Well the techs been developed – adn theres some curent work being done to see if its commercially viable to refuel adn reboost old sats. Though the question is, is it cheaper to boost up a tanker/tug each time to refuel the sats, or refuel a orbital depot to later refuel the tanker/tug? Given the target sats can be in whildly unrelated orbits, the depot might not help.
> == there is so much the Shuttle has done to pioneer space…
Yeah, really shuttle has done the bulk of all efforts ni space. It lifted half of all the tonnage of cargo to orbit, and 2/3rds of all the people, humans ever lifted into orbit. As well as doing a wealth of construction etc things never done before — or likely in the future for a while.